
CDPffilGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Warfare of a Nation 

(Die deutsche Erhebung von 1914) 



Lectures and Essays 

by 

Friedrich Meinecke 

Professor in the University of Berlin 



Translated by 

John A. Spaulding 



PUBLISHED BT 

THE DAVIS PRESS 
Wobcesteb, Massachusetts 
1915 



J 



V 



Copyrighted, 1916 

By John A. Spaxjlding 

Worcester, Mass. 



JAN 20 1916 



UA420554 



i , | 






/+- 



TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 

Professor Friedrich Meinecke is unquestionably the foremost 
living German historian in the field of modern German history. 
Since 1893 he has been the leading editor of the Historische 
Zeitschrift, and has taught successively at the universities of 
Strassburg, Freiburg im Breisgau and Berlin. The character of 
one who knows the German empire as a whole is reflected 
in his writings. In these he displays a remarkable capacity for 
following the currents of thought in Germany since the time of 
Fichte — a power not only inspired by a broad patriotism, but 
strengthened by an unusual degree of critical impartiality. 

The accompanying volume of essays and lectures possesses 
a particular claim on the interest of American readers. As it 
was composed for the most part after August 1, 1914 its chapters 
follow closely on the heels of great events, and are written in a 
style both forceful and eloquent, though restrained. The volume 
differs from many works of a similarly temperate character which 
deal with the economic and political phases of Germany's share 
in the present war, inasmuch as Professor Meinecke treats mainly 
the historical and cultural forces which underly the attitude of 
the Germans as a people. 

Throughout his work the two supplementary ideas of state 
and nation appear in alternating association and contrast. In 
the sense in which the word is here used "nation" signifies 
"people"; the increasing participation of the German People in 
the control of German destinies forms the main theme of these 
essays. Much has been made in England and America of the 
difference between the Anglo-Saxon "commonwealth" which 
exists solely for the good of the people, and the German "state" 
which has an existence, "ideals and values of its own, to which 



4 translator's preface 

the interests and ideals of the individuals must be freely subor- 
dinated."* Professor Meinecke meets this issue by defining the 
modern state as "the aggregate of the state's requirements and 
the political instincts of the nation." He shows how an equi- 
librium of state policy and national civilization is essential to the 
existence of the modern state. "We too," he writes, "desired 
to be free and to develope personalities, but our historical and 
aesthetic sense nevertheless recognized incomparable values in 
the vital forces of state and nation and regarded it as the great 
problem of life — a problem never to be completely solved, yet 
constantly challenging solution — to remain free and independent 
in the service of an objective social order." Of Germany before 
the war, during the period from 1890 to 1914, he does not hesitate 
to affirm that its political ideals were "in danger of becoming 
somewhat conventional." But at the same time he points out 
the latent individualistic and nationalistic forces which were 
constantly striving to achieve self assertion in a multitude of ways. 
Considering the present crises in comparison with those of earlier 
date in which the Germans have had part he declares, "it is the 
peculiar character of this uprising that from the outset it proceeded 
from a remarkable equilibrium of matured state policy and the 
ripened will of the people. " 

Not only the attitude of the German people toward their own 
state but also their attitude toward foreign nations is discussed 
with a remarkable degree of fair-minded self-criticism. From 
sources hostile to Germany we often hear the complaint that in 
the eyes of German historians and philosophers "the notion of a 
world state is incompatible with the essence of the state. " * 
Professor Meinecke emphasizes the need of overcoming the 
tendency toward national isolation. "When this war has come 
to a close it will be difficult enough as it is to overcome hatred and 
pick up the torn threads of scientific and artistic intercourse. 
If we prove ourselves in this more high-minded than our opponents, 
we shall display not merely intellectual superiority but political 

*Cf. Atlantic Monthly for August 1915; "State against Commonwealth," by A. D. Lindsay. 



translator's preface 5 

shrewdness as well. " Allied to the above charge is the conception 
that Germany is striving to impose her "Kultur" upon other 
nations. As to this our author declares: "If the world, as the 
poet prophesies, is some day to be saved through the German 
spirit, this can only come to pass through a spirit comprehending 
the entire world." 

Two essays which appear in the original have been omitted 
from this translation on the ground that they deal with topics 
which assume a knowledge of local thought and conditions not 
generally possessed except by readers who are personally familiar 
with German life. The title, " Die Deutsche Erhebung von 1914, " 
which, literally translated, would read "The German Uprising 
of 1914," has been rendered freely, but always with a view to 
suggesting the main theme of the entire book. 

John A. Spaulding. 

Worcester, Mass. 
December 2, 1915. 



THE NATIONAL CRISES OF 1813, 1848, 1870 

AND 1914 

IN these days, when we are forced to hold our ground in the 
East and the West by putting forth our entire national power 
and when our sons and brothers are facing peril and death for 
our sake, our hearts are filled not only with intense sympathy 
but with a solemn chant and the clash of arms. We are experienc- 
ing a fulfillment of uncertain hopes and a release from many 
anxious forebodings. About us and within us we perceive a 
period of national exaltation and from the height to which we 
have attained we look back with clear gaze — at once grateful and 
proud — upon the previous crises in our national existence. For 
we would not be standing here had they not shown us the way, 
and we may justly assert that we have proved ourselves worthy 
of our fathers. In the midst of the most terrible war in the mem- 
ory of man, with a world in arms against them such as no people 
has yet had to face, the German people are uplifted to their old 
belief in the meaning and reasonableness of human history, in 
the victory of the spirit over brute force, in the victory of their 
indwelling principles. Like the Germany of Fichte we are engaged 
in this struggle as representatives of mankind, and are not to be 
daunted by the wild slanders of our enemies and the attitude of 
neutral Pharisees. They accuse us of being renegades from the 
lofty principles of an intellectual Germany of former days. These 
they would restore to us by delivering us and themselves at the 
same time from the nightmare of German militarism./ But we 
who stand in a closer relation to these principles believe our judg- 
ment to be truer than theirs regarding the pervasive spirit of our 
history. We also are capable of deliberate self-criticism in com- 
paring the age in which we live with the crises of our forefathers' 
day. In our progress toward the victory which for us is indispen- 
sable we have no use for illusions and self-deception. Indeed it is 



8 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

characteristic of our present uprising that we do not allow our 
inner exaltation to become an intoxication, but rather seek clearly 
and with precision to fulfill all duties of the moment, and most of 
all the duty of recognizing the truth. 

Four times within a century the German people have experi- 
enced a great national uprising: in 1813, 1848, 1870 and today. 
Each of these periods can be understood only as the culmination 
of a movement slow in its development, as the expansion of powers 
long possessed and gradually matured. Each of them, when close- 
ly observed, has its individual character and on the other hand, 
regarded in its broader relations, a place in the continuity of 
national existence — at one and the same time an independent ring 
and a link in a chain. Precisely as each one of us today regards 
it as the fullest expression of his own nature to enter the ranks of 
his imperilled nation. 

For the character of the individual and the character of the 
nation are inseparable. This was the great discovery which we 
owe to the time of our first uprising. Preceding this came a 
development of individual personality incomparable in its grand- 
eur. Who of us, the descendants of that generation, could boast 
of having sought the goal of life in personal cultivation and the 
spiritualization of character with such singleness of purpose and 
devotion as did our great poets and philosophers, creators of the 
ideal of humanity? In their eyes the outer world sank into a 
meaningless vision before the creative power which inspires the 
souls of men. Lost in contemplation of this sacred flame, they 
long failed to perceive the storm which was threatening their 
particular state and Germany as a whole. Their desire was to 
serve mankind. In this service they had already learned that 
though the highest human values may be perceived by dispas- 
sionate observation, they can be created solely through moral 
energy, that the spirit is the architect of the flesh. /Now they 
recognized that mankind is most fully revealed in the character 
of the individual nation and that no more splendid task can be set 
for the creative spirit than to restore in novel beauty the ruined 
national structure. To live and die for the nation meant now to 
live and die for mankind and for the God of mankind. 



THE WAKFARE OF A NATION 9 

It was but a small class in the state among whom these lofty 
convictions attained to full clearness, but they exerted the force 
of a deep and vital emotion upon the entire people. In 1813 the 
service of one's country became a divine service, pursued with a 
truly religious fervor and devotion, and a new dignity of moral 
consecration enveloped the Prussian state as champion of the 
German nation. Hitherto its policy had followed the restricted, 
suspicious existence of a militaristic bureaucracy, based on the 
painful endeavor of its founders. But after the catastrophe of 
1806 this existence suddenly expanded to embrace within its 
national institutions the new ethics of the humanitarian ideal as 
well as the new ideal of the nation, and afforded opportunity for 
the rise of the great men whom these ideals inspired. There was 
a sudden swarm of talented and devoted public servants in Prussia, 
statesmen and generals, politicians and philosophers. It was the 
energy of men like Stein, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau which 
plunged Prussia into the War of Liberation and raised her to the 
height of victory and triumph. 

The soldiers in the armies which followed these men were 
loyal, touchingly devoted and easily inspired — but as yet politi- 
cally immature. Differences in culture and in the personal atti- 
tude toward life were still too great between the inspired leaders 
and the body of citizens educated in the spirit of narrow philis- 
tinism. Nevertheless, the younger generation who had been 
participants in the struggle embraced the new ideals of nation 
and of culture with naive enthusiasm, even with overweening 
radicalism. By so doing they caused the Prussian government 
to revert to its early policy of narrow-minded suspicion. In these 
youthful ideals of a free and united Germany, a nationalized poli- 
tical existence, the state, suspecting a revolutionary and demo- 
cratic element, after 1815 repulsed the forces which in 1813 it had 
invoked. Had Prussia then possessed the ambition to unite 
Germany under her leadership she might have rallied this young 
manhood, who would have been able to develop their ideals to 
maturity in the public service. The complete nationalization of 
Prussia would have followed, together with the political training 
of the younger generation. In fact, however, the following decades 
witnessed a struggle on the part of the reactionary theories 



10 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

of conservative Prussia and of the other German governments 
against the ever spreading liberal and even radical sentiments. 
On the one hand the claims of authority were unduly emphasized, 
on the other those of freedom and union: through the latter the 
individual monarchies of a former day felt that their existence 
was endangered. It seemed almost an impossibility to unite the 
people and the government, nation and state by a common bond. 

Yet already steps had been taken toward the formation of 
such a bond in the institutions of the Prussian period of reform. 
Universal military service and municipal regulation showed the 
possibility of combining idealism with practical politics, the per- 
sonal element with subordination to the larger whole, freedom with 
authority, if not without tension yet with an increase of power 
such as proceeds only from the tension of strong vital forces. 
Because of this development the Prussian state, even in the period 
of reaction, possessed more internal vitality and military power 
than any other state of Germany. It did indeed forget its appoint- 
ed task of advancing toward the goal of a nationalized common- 
wealth. Only one great service was performed for the nation's 
economic life through the founding of the customs-union by 
Prussian officials, members of a very efficient and well trained 
yet paternal bureaucracy. 

The Prussian state and the German people were at this time 
torn by discord and controversy. Patriotic Germans felt their 
country to be weak and oppressed internally, weak and despised 
in the council of nations. To be sure they had their Goethe, their 
music, their world-wide reputation as scholars as sources of pride 
at home and abroad, and an interested Frenchman on one occa- 
sion made the journey to Heilbronn to do reverence to the romantic 
shade of Kathchen. But for all this the Germans felt themselves, 
like Hamlet, a prey to the disproportion between intellectual 
overproduction and an inert will, uncertain whether the latter 
was due to the fault of others or of themselves. At what a dis- 
advantage was poetic fervor in the midst of local narrow-minded- 
ness and political indifference, or in other circles, political ambition 
by the side of political cant and inexperience. Even the great 
intellectual achievements of German idealism, the spiritual source 
of the uprising of 1813, seemed in the middle of the century to be 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 11 

overtaken by decay. Produced in an era of purely intellectual 
effort, they afforded a generation of political and social discontent 
no consolation and had no answer for the problems of modern 
existence, the constitutional struggles and the imminent economic 
rivalry of the classes. The modern spirit of realism which looked 
down on them as an anaemic system of metaphysics was itself 
in fact still permeated by the old unpolitical idealism. The old- 
fashioned state which confronted the men of that period, the 
police-ridden state with its brutal soldiery, its insolent nobility 
and officials, its unctuous religious faith, seemed ripe for destruc- 
tion. But with regard to the new state which was to take its 
place opinions and hopes differed widely. According to some it 
should extend the hand of freedom, equality and brotherhood 
to Poland and France, in the opinion of others it must renew the 
greatness and power of the mediaeval empire. Now it was to 
spring up from the ruins of the former separate states and dynasties 
of Germany, and again these dynasties were to be allowed an 
existence of uncertain dependence upon the imperial power, the 
bearer of which in turn should be sought now in one place, now 
in another. But beneath this infinity of delusions lay the funda- 
mental truth than an intelligent, courageous, industrious and 
cheerful people felt the need of a new and larger field of existence 
in which it might develop and advance. Never has there been 
a more intricate confusion of political truth and political folly in 
the aims of all parties at once than in 1848 and 1849, the years 
of the German revolution. The Liberals and Democrats mis- 
judged the vital energy still inherent in the individual German 
state and the force of particularistic sentiment still instinct in 
the masses. Above all they misjudged the incomparable political 
value of the compact Prussian organism, which through its 
powerful army afforded the only sure guaranty for the national 
independence of entire Germany. /• In their turn the Prussian 
conservatives disregarded the fact that this army had attained 
its strength not only through Prussian discipline but also through 
the German character and national ideal and that the power of 
Prussia could develop only if it were prepared for complete ab- 
sorption into the spirit and national ideal of Germany. Finally, 



12 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

they disregarded the just demands for freedom of the middle and 
lower classes, and childishly attempted to cause the stream of 
social evolution to revert to its feudal sources. 

Thus the political agitation of 1848 proceeded at the outset 
from serious mistakes and prejudices of both parties. It con- 
tained too large a proportion of the crude popular will, too little of 
broad-minded statesmanship. Moreover, it was characterized in 
large measure by the passions and injustice of a civil conflict. The 
descendants of that generation find it difficult to draw inspiration 
from the retrospect. They either condemn the unhappy Revolu- 
tion or regret the shattering of noble hopes. And yet we may 
revere this period in its connection with our national history as 
an uprising of the German people, destined indeed to tragic 
failure, yet genuine and sincere. Its most genuine peculiarity 
was the eager impulse of the people to assume the independent 
control of German destinies, and however much the democratic 
cry of freedom seemed at times to drown out all the rest, yet the 
aim of the German nation which knew to its cost the price of 
weakness was, as Dahlmann declared at the time, above all the 
attainment of power. Germany desired once more to play an 
active part in the world. None of the many watchwords of the 
year 1848 found such wide response as the demands for a German 
navy and a German empire. When, on the 28th of March, 
1849, the bells of the city of Frankfort proclaimed the election of 
King Frederick William IV as German Emperor, the purpose of 
this election was to make Germany powerful through the absorp- 
tion, of Prussia into the empire. To be sure, the expectation that 
Prussia would make a complete sacrifice of its separate existence 
arose in its turn from the errors of that generation. But even 
those who expected this, sacrificed many of their own avowed 
convictions in voting for the election. They sacrificed the lesser 
for the more important. To be able to do this is the secret of 
true statesmanship in every age, the first and last dictate of the 
national conscience. Make the sacrifice for the sake of the 
reward — die, in order to attain new life! There was still a certain 
youthful tempestuousness in the heart of the German people 
when it attempted to share control of the affairs of state, as yet 
the abundance and warmth of its emotions were not equaled by 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 13 

its clarity of conception or unity of will. Yet the signs of maturity 
were increasing. The German imperial constitution of 1849 with 
its hereditary emperor, its union of the military and financial 
authority in the hand of the imperial government, its attempt, 
imperfect though it might be, to recognize the right to existence 
of the separate states, and above all with its fundamental prin- 
ciple of affording freedom and self-respect to the individual citizen 
and power to the whole, marked a prodigious advance in the life 
of the nation. The gulf between the leaders and the masses was 
no longer so wide as in the uprising of 1813. To be sure, coupled 
with this rise of the masses to a clearer consciousness of their 
political desires went a loss of originality among the individual 
leaders. Men such as Dahlmann, Gagern and Radowitz were 
not to be compared with Stein, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau; 
they themselves would generously have confessed the fact. 
Nevertheless, in many respects they might regard themselves 
as their disciples and executors. 

Once more, however, the time was to appear when not the 
many but the few represented the genius of the nation and were 
forced to pave the way for their countrymen. It seemed at first 
as if the tendency was to revert sharply from all previous ambi- 
tions, and so it was at first with mistrust and bitterness that the 
titanic genius was followed, who sought the new path for Ger- 
many over cliffs and chasms. But once he had raised us to the 
height, our eyes were opened. Thus and thus only, we confessed, 
might the longed for goal be reached; thus only could be solved 
the confusion of the vital forces of our history. Hitherto Prussia 
and Germany, the individual state and the nation, conservative 
and radical had suffered mutually from constant friction. Bis- 
marck could not indeed and did not wish to heal all these wounds, 
but by his solution of the German question he gave us a breathing 
space and freedom to wield the sword. For this solution he had 
to reach back from the world of nineteenth-century thought into 
an older, simpler, greater age. The members of the Frankfort 
national assembly had been disciples of Stein — the statesman 
Bismarck went back to Frederick the Great, and the German 
Bismarck to even older periods, for his patriotism was the heroism 
of the popular epic. Yet his deliberate creation bore the mark of 



14 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

Frederick, its foremost aim was to conquer for Prussia the position 
of power to which it was entitled. More than ever had the 
weapon for this conflict, the Prussian army, been modelled after 
the spirit of Frederick by the reorganization of Emperor William 
and Roon. The popular-civic elements which Scharnhorst and 
Boy en had added upon the introduction of universal military 
service were indeed not wholly done away with, but they were 
made subordinate, and the aristocratic and professional body of 
officers again did most to determine the spirit of the army. Every- 
where, sooner or later, conservative tendencies favorable to the 
older Prussian ideal proceeded from Bismark's labors. And yet, 
as his farseeing and unprejudiced statesmanship was quick to 
appreciate, success was certain only if the national and liberal 
forces of modern Germany were also called into play. In this 
process they never attained to leadership, but had to be content 
and were in fact satisfied in no small degree by the imperial con- 
stitution, the right of election to the Reichstag and liberal legis- 
lation since 1867. Bismarck's success with the particularistic 
forces was similar. Through the events of 1866 they were sub- 
dued and then raised again and supported by the position which 
he assigned them in the Bundesrat, where henceforth they in turn 
did their share in supporting the empire. In this manner the 
tremendous, dominating will of an inspired architect everywhere 
prevailed. And the German people and its princes were great 
enough to acknowledge this man's greatness and when the call 
to arms resounded in 1870, to follow him in joyous obedience. 
This, therefore, is the peculiar character of the uprising of 1870. 
A people hitherto misguided, which had strayed and stumbled 
when left to search for itself, found the Moses who led it from the 
wilderness and with naming heroism fought the battles which he 
found necessary. The energy of a statesman's will satisfied the 
longings of the popular will, and so kindled it to mighty achieve- 
ment. 

The men of 1848, however, complained that the statesman 
predominated too greatly over the will of the people. Their 
early dream of a people wholly self-representative and free was 
now relegated to the background. And Bismarck did indeed 
thrust aside everything which stood in his path. The liberal 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 15 

champions of the revolutionary tradition had to suffer this, as 
well as the new popular party of the Clericals in the struggle be- 
tween the state and Catholicism, and that of the Social-Democrats 
after the murderous attempts of 1878. Hence there appeared 
new schisms in the political life of the nation, and the earlier one 
between the old fashioned Prussian conservatives and the body of 
liberal citizens could not as yet be eliminated by Bismarck's gift 
of a common Fatherland, uniting nation and state. The weak 
point in the uprising of 1870 became evident. The peculiar share 
of the nation in it had been too small (we say this without fear 
of being misunderstood), the people had been too exclusively 
a tool in the hands of a mighty leader. They had had no other 
choice since their own maturity and strength had not sufficed — 
yet complete strength and maturity can be attained only through 
independence. The ancient sins and weaknesses of bitter party 
hatred, now intensified into class and confessional hatred, could 
not be finally done away with by the statesman whom they most 
deeply affected. For this task the force of pure will-power which 
stood at his command did not suffice. Yet neither were the 
intellectual powers of the age sufficient. The older political 
theories, indeed, faith in the sole saving grace of definite partisan 
dogmas and philosophies had collapsed. It was no longer ideas 
but interests which determined the existence of parties, and 
through Bismarck's example strength of will and sense of reality 
took on a higher value. But the further example set by him of 
placing these powers at the exclusive disposal of the state and so 
of that interest which was also the most vital of ideas, was not 
similarly followed.; The intellectual and political life of the nation 
since 1870 began to be defaced by coarser traits of a material 
and egotistic nature. In art, literature and learning to be sure 
a few great individuals, often in severe isolation, extended the 
contour-lines of German culture, but in the foreground there was 
ample space for a shallow, formal decadence. Today we recall 
with shame the vulgar intoxication of the age of promoters, the 
unsuspecting arrogance with which a trivial liberalism opposed 
the Catholic propaganda, the shortsightedness, the indifference 
with which the often brutal demands of the lowest classes were 
met; and not least of all we lament the aesthetic insensibility 



16 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

which complacently sacrificed the modest, old-fashioned, sterling 
Germany of our youth, the quiet charm of our ancient cities, 
gardens and furniture to the cheap adornments of wholesale 
industry and popular taste. Probably all of us whose youth lay 
in that period shared in some degree this fault of a deficiency 
of social and intellectual culture. Nor have we wholly overcome 
it to the present day; but the better elements of the nation have 
at last awakened to the fact and begun not merely to criticize but 
to comprehend in the light of history and so to remedy the evil. 
Today it is apparent to us that our experience immediately before 
and after 1870 was logically connected as the transition from spec- 
ulative thought to realistic energy of will, from a manifold pro- 
vincialism to the existence of a great nation, from agrarianism 
and the retail trade of the artisan to industrialism and wholesale 
manufactures. The transition in the political and economic 
fields especially was so abrupt that it severed a multitude of con- 
nections in matters of tradition, judgment and taste which had 
given unity, elegance and distinction to the earlier period of our 
culture. The German stood in imminent danger of losing a chap- 
ter of his past history and commencing afresh as a parvenue. 
The works of Goethe and Schiller in poorly printed, gaudily bound 
new editions were of course still to be seen on our bookshelves, 
but the profound truths of our great poets and philosophers 
vanished in obscurity, to give place to the study of their rhyme- 
technique and their love-affairs in the advanced classes of the 
universities. With dubious bewilderment we young students 
regarded the marvelous and colossal systems of metaphysics 
constructed by Fichte, Scheming and Hegel. We could do nothing 
with them, for a soberly applied theory of the powers of the under- 
standing rendered us skeptical toward all attempts at a compre- 
hensive, intellectual interpretation of the universe. The assem- 
bling and criticism of facts and sources seemed to us the safest, 
at times almost the sole task of the historian. It was for the most- 
part a dry and rarified atmosphere which enveloped us during 
the eighties.] 

And yet our hearts beat higher when we beheld the aged 
Kaiser in his corner window, when we heard Bismarck in the 
Reichstag and encountered Moltke in the Tiergarten. Their 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 17 

connection with our existence was as much a matter of course 
as our belief that Germany, the moment it was challenged, would 
enter anew on the victorious career of 1870. Neither did we lack 
new political ideals, by the aid of which we sought to do more 
than simply maintain the achievements of that year. We hailed 
with rejoicing our contemporaries, Karl Peters, Jiihlke and Count 
Pfeil when by their bold enterprise they won for us a portion of 
Africa, and pictured to ourselves in romantic colors the new Ger- 
man plantations which would spring up there. Even more pro- 
foundly were we affected by the imperial message of 1881 and the 
high moral task which it assigned to the state and society. We 
were inspired by the thought that Germany of all nations was 
destined to be the pioneer of social reform. That Social-Democ- 
racy must at the same time submit to a special system of legis- 
lative supervision we considered wholly justified by its revolu- 
tionary, anti-national platform. For a large portion of the young- 
er generation there was in the eighties only one possible party: 
the party of Bismarck. He towered head and shoulders above 
all others. For a long time we had possessed an almost dogmatic 
faith in every path of foreign as well as of domestic policy which 
he pointed out to us, an almost moral aversion toward whoever 
blocked these paths. 

Yet already we heard commanding voices from the ranks 
of our contemporaries, voices which belonged to another world. 
These recommended to us Zola, Ibsen and Bjornsen, sympathized 
openly or covertly with the oppressed Social-Democrats and 
treated with indifference or disrespect the political and national 
ideals which we prized so highly. They were the literary Storm 
and Stress generation of 1890, the realists, the new supermen for 
whom the state was only a repellant monstrosity, the deadly foe 
of the free individual. We too desired to be free and to develop 
personalities, but our historical and aesthetic sense nevertheless 
recognized incomparable values in the vital forces of state and 
nation, and regarded it as the great problem of life — a problem 
never to be completely solved, yet constantly challenging solu- 
tion — to remain free and independent in the service of an objective 
social order. Yet even we at times were moved to question 
whether our political ideals were not in danger of becoming 
somewhat conventional. 



18 THE "WARFARE OF A NATION 

The years following 1890 were years of transition, crowded 
with remarkable events. Suddenly a tendency toward new paths 
awoke in the policy of the state itself. The young ruler dreamt 
of a reconciliation of the hostile classes of society, to be effected 
by means of bold and radical social legislation; he undertook to 
plough the sea and began to speak of goals lying upon the water 
and beyond the ocean. At intervals a voice of warning and criti- 
cism from the aged hero in the Sachsenwald made itself heard, 
and to the last he could count upon an audience and the approval 
of large, influential elements in the nation. In spite of the repeal 
of the anti-socialistic legislation the social millenium was not 
forth-coming, but on the contrary the strife of the classes seemed 
to become yet more embittered at the beginning of the new cen- 
tury. Other groups of social and economic interests began to 
follow the example of strict organization afforded by the Social- 
Democrats, and by this means to achieve a ruthless self-assertion. 
The literary revolution of 1890 seemed, at the close of the century, 
to relapse into a decadent aestheticism. And was the nation as 
a whole really progressing? To be sure, a somewhat undecided 
foreign policy made itself felt now and again, and our colonial 
possessions were increased by scattered additions in the South 
Sea and Kiautchau. Of a consistent and organic development 
there was no trace. 

Meanwhile one and all felt that, irresistibly as the seed forces 
its way out of the earth, we were outgrowing the existence of an 
over-crowded continental power. Hitherto we had been able to 
support themselves in this existence by yielding up the surplus 
of our population to the lands open to trans-oceanic colonization. 
Now emigration was decreasing almost yearly, because we were 
able to feed the growing population within our own borders by 
means of an industry increasingly dependent upon foreign trade. 
As a result our young merchants and engineers were leaving 
Germany for periods of varying duration, and, since they no 
longer had to lose contact with the Fatherland, were becoming 
the pioneers of German expansion. ' While our own country was 
growing stronger economically and with respect to population, 
the world was becoming the field of our enterprise. Foreign 
nations, alarmed by our success, sought to discover its causes. I 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 1 ) 

With astonishment they learned that the German laborer coul I 
be at once a discontented Social-Democrat and a conscientious 
and exact performer of his daily task. This discipline and subor- 
dination to a great organization he had clearly attained through 
his military training; at present it contributed not only to the 
rise of his social and political party, but to the rise of German 
industry. And as he illustrated the influence of the system of 
popular instruction, the merchant and engineer showed the effect 
of a carefully organized and maintained system of higher educa- 
tion. Hereupon a new watchword was heard abroad. The Ger- 
mans, it was declared, are a people of organization and method, 
of respect for authority and training. What they accomplish 
is accomplished by these means. They are not more gifted or 
cultivated than we, the representatives of an older, more dis- 
tinguished Western-European civilization, but they understood 
how to raise the average man by their system of training, how to 
render mediocrity more efficient. For this reason, however, they 
are not a free people, they are a nation of barrack-room and school. 
Their learning, also, of which they are so proud, is not the fruit 
of genius but of patient and methodical effort. Their art is 
tasteless, their manners even more so. Once upon a time, another 
speaker might add, they possessed more cultivation, in the days 
when Goethe and Beethoven still lived among them; but the 
race of poets and philosophers has since 1870 become a people 
of petty officers and clerks; Prussia by her conquest has degraded 
the whole of Germany. 

Such was the foreign reply to our economic advance and the 
first stirrings of our trans-oceanic ambition; since the other nations 
felt our economic and political power they sought in return to 
lower us morally in the world's estimation. We saw indeed that 
we were purposely misunderstood, yet we were not deaf to the 
element of truth in this hostile criticism, for thoughtful minds 
among us had long been stirred by the question whether through 
our gain in material wealth we had not reduced our spiritual 
possessions. Was not the lust for commerce and power threat- 
ening to destroy the finer qualities which had formerly produced 
our splendid culture? Had we in reality risen above the age of 
promoters which we so despised? Can the same creative genius 



20 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

which had once guided the German mind to starry heights flourish 
in an atmosphere of infinite regulation? In a book which appeared 
shortly before the war a deep thinker on cultural topics, Emil 
Hammacher, had answered this question with an emphatic 
negative. Education, he complained, is our tyrant, it produces 
a multitude of mediocre talents, but the individual genius is either 
crushed by the multitude or, if he is successful in self-defense, 
isolated from the mass of the people who thus are shut off from 
the very source of power. This criticism applies, indeed, not 
only to German but to modern civilization in general, yet its 
gloomy forebodings naturally have their root in the daily life 
of the Fatherhood. > 

To this question our own age cannot give a final answer. Our 
descendants will be able to survey more freely the rise or decline 
of our national existence and culture than can we, who are in the 
midst of a struggle against external and internal dangers. But 
on the other hand we can look more deeply than they into our 
own hearts; our self-criticism is one with our daily experience. 
Above all else, we feel the tremendous responsibility of the strug- 
gle, for it is a matter of life or death and will perhaps determine 
the fate of our descendants for centuries to come. This responsi- 
bility will, we trust, make keener the estimate which we now 
undertake to render as to our position in the series of German 
uprisings. Just as this war is waged for the sum of our existence, 
our self-criticism must extend to the sum of our achievements. 
We must now assemble all the results of the foregoing observations. 

Involuntarily our glance rests in comparison first of all upon 
the uprising of 1870, which lies nearest to us. "Today we have 
no Bismarck and no Moltke among us," were familiar words, 
spoken not without anxiety in the first days of the war. Is this 
perhaps a confirmation of the view that ours is an age favorable 
to talents, but not to genius? We reply resolutely that we choose 
at present not to answer this question. For the present, rather, 
our desire is different — we wish today to be victorious without 
Bismarck and Moltke. Our leaders whose personalities are only 
gradually being revealed to us, with whose deepest and best 
selves we are as yet scarcely familiar, have abundant ambition 
to approach in their achievements as nearly as possible the great 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 21 

heroes of 1870, but they have no ambition to be acclaimed as 
great men before the achievement is complete. The emperor 
and the imperial chancellor, we may even now affirm, have 
assumed the historic task which has fallen to them with lofty 
spirit and firm hand. The laurel already has been justly bestowed 
upon the deliverer of East-Prussia. We are also convinced that 
among the leaders who are forging the steel ring of our army of 
millions in Lorraigne and Northern France and who have subdued 
the Belgian fortifications, men are even now coming into prom- 
inence who bear the stamp of the iron York von Wartenburg and 
the expert strategist Goeben. And when we think of U 9 and 
the cruiser Emden with their young, enthusiastic, fearless heroes 
and of the men who loyally defended Tsingtao to the bitter end, 
our hearts cry out in gladness over this heroism blended with 
mental vigor which developed naturally because time and place 
demanded it, and which is developing many thousand-fold in the 
boundless struggle of our troops in East and West. Who, in the 
face of the mighty deeds which are now expected of each individual 
combatant in the ranks, can still feel the desire to speak of average 
efficiency, of patient method and suppression of the important 
individual by drill and numbers. Even should this criticism of 
our nation's peaceful labors be recorded — the war has revealed a 
simple heroic spirit in infinite numbers of our fellow countrymen 
which mocks at such a judgment. It is true, this war demands 
somewhat different standards of value than other wars. As there 
are now scarcely any battles definitely marked by day and locality 
and the separate encounters follow another like the waves of a 
boundless ocean, so it is with the deeds of individual men. Here 
and there they are at times more sharply defined, not always be- 
cause they actually surpass the rest but because a favoring ray 
of light illumines them more brightly. At the birth of modern 
individualism, during the Renaissance, men's souls were set on 
heroism because it signified personal distinction, fame and ele- 
vation above the common people. Today, the wearers of the 
iron cross constitute but a minority of those who deserve to wear 
it. They are to us representatives of a universal heroism which 
exalts hundreds of thousands of our nation intellectually and 



22 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

spiritually above their common nature and yet which is practised 
by them without ostentation, merely as the most natural fulfill- 
ment of duty. 

Here there must be other springs of action than those of 
personal ambition. No doubt we here prove ourselves to be a 
people of method and organization; here certainly are the after- 
effects of a long process of education in citizenship, through 
which universal military service has passed into our very exis- 
tence. For this reason the German performs his duty to the whole 
more willingly, punctually, devotedly than the average foreigner, 
But not for this reason alone ; on the contrary he is inspired by the 
moral value of this organization. He knows for a certainty that 
with each individual rests the prosperity of the whole, and it is a 
spiritual necessity to him to love the power which he obeys ; there 
still lives in us something of the loyalty of the old German retainer, 
as well as the reverence which Goethe taught us for the organiza- 
tion natural to humanity. And, most difficult of all for the 
foreigner to appreciate, these qualities are capable of union with 
a strong and native individualism. The ordinary German is 
wont to perform his daily task with a touch of humor, and to do 
deeds of heroism in the humorous manner of everyday. Men who 
are herded like cattle have no humor ! It is another characteristic 
of German personality to be sparing of pathos and conceal the 
deeper feelings. Therefore we readily understand why it is 
difficult for others to detect the impulse of individual emotion 
beneath the seemingly mechanical performance of duty. Never- 
theless, to the German, an enhancement of personality, a joyous 
exaltation of one's self is implied in self-sacrifice to a great and 
sacred cause. We do not deny this motive to our opponents when 
we claim for ourselves its possession in a peculiarly national form. 
And to this must be added yet another element characteristic of 
the vitality and will-power of modern humanity in general. The 
man of today cares less for mere longevity than for the content, 
the intensity, the development of his powers during life. Like 
Icarus, he risks life itself to enjoy a moment of life's perfect full- 
ness. There exist crude, repellant forms of this vitality in the 
overwrought passion of the sportsman akin to the gladiator. 
There is and has always been a vulgar method of spending one's 



THE WARFARE OP A NATION 23 

life solely for its enjoyment. But throughout all the deeper 
thought of today there appears, as a reaction against the re- 
straints upon personality, a marvelously uniform tendency blended 
of resignation and the longing for life to expand the moment to 
eternity, to seek the eternal in the temporal and yet independently 
of it. Die, and attain new life — make the sacrifice for the sake 
of the reward. Death for the Fatherland, this most ancient 
sacrifice has won for us a new and lasting meaning. Our young 
men of tody were as filled with the desire for life as any youthful 
generation that has ever existed. And now we behold them 
driven by this impetuous and irresistible impulse onto the battle- 
field. Our "ver sacrum" lies now at the Yser canal where the 
reserve regiments of young volunteers led the charge. How many 
splendid spirits, dear to us and full of promise, this war has 
claimed already. But their sacrifice for us betokens a "sacred 
Springtime " for all Germany. We are once more sure of ourselves. 
In preceding years we were apparently irreparably divided, often 
faint and discouraged at the unfortunate hostility of classes and 
confessions, the menace to our intellectual life. Now at a word 
we are raised above all barriers, one mighty, resolute community 
of the nation in life and death. 

And only now do we perceive more clearly the actual forces 
underlying our latest development. At bottom they possessed 
more of health, unity and strength than we had suspected. In 
very truth, during the last decades when we feared to be drifting 
apart we have grown closer together. First of all, the political 
ideal of the new empire has stood the test. Bismarck constructed 
it for us at a time when we declared the nation could not have 
done so with its own strenggh. Today, on the contrary, from the 
emperor and chancellor down to the workman we find the same 
unspoken thought as inspiration: since we have no Bismarck 
among us, each one of us must be somewhat of a Bismarck. 
Our combined strength must suffice for the accomplishment for 
which each individual is responsible. By this means, therefore, 
we are succeeding where the men of '48 failed, in taking Germany's 
fate into our own hand and governing it freely and independently. 
Herewith perhaps the old gulf between monarchical and demo- 
cratic ideals may yet be bridged. One party desires this, the 



24 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

other that amendment to our national constitution, and the 
Social-Democrats are outspoken in their expectation of a new 
system of suffrage for Prussia after the war is over. As to these 
matters we shall reach an agreement later on. But we will do so 
upon the basis of the national community for which at present 
the blood of every citizen, class and party is being shed. 

This united, heroic exertion for the state represents a great 
vote of confidence in it on the part of the nation, and proves that 
it is sound at heart, that in the main it has chosen its course 
rightly. Formerly we have often been disappointed at the slight 
moral results of social legislation. Now we behold the ripening 
of the seed. On the other hand, a portion of the middle classes 
have been dissatisfied because the government would not resume 
the sharper weapons of repression which Bismarck had once 
employed against Social-Democracy. Now the government is 
justified, now the parties also are justified which attempted to 
engage Social-Democracy in its share of constructive labor in 
behalf of the state — and which by so doing were themselves here 
and there bridging the gulf. But more than this, the economic 
policy of the state which was so violently attacked by the Social- 
Democrats and a portion of the Liberals, is justified. Without 
the protection of agriculture we should now lack the grain to 
make bread, we should lack also many a sturdy man in the ranks; 
without the maintenance of a home market, industry and trade 
would now be unable to bear the isolation from foreign countries. 
And most of all is that justified which has been condemned by 
the name of German militarism. Today, it is literally our shield 
and protection. It is but Germany's reply to the Thirty Years' 
War, to Louis XIV, to Napoleon I and — we may now add — to 
Edward VII — and all the Zsars whose name is Nicholas. Un- 
doubtedly there will be occasion for quiet discussion, after the 
war, as to whether this or that crude quality was really necessary 
and is so inseparably combined with the strength of the institu- 
tion that it must be permitted to remain. But our defensive 
power itself can never be diminished, must on the contrary be 
increased to lastingly discourage our enemies in East and West 
from attacking us. Our peculiarly crowded position on the con- 
tinent forces us to combine in every field — in questions of defense, 



THE "WARFARE OF A NATION 25 

of economics, of social policy, one and the same principle is engaged. 
In the past everything has tended and must do so even more in 
the future, not merely to make us a united, powerful and independ- 
ent nation in the ordinary sense, but to compel us to become yet 
more united, powerful and independent than our neighbors, who 
live under less pressure than we and have bad much smaller risks 
to avoid in their national history. Our fate externally has now 
become our inner destiny. We have been crowded together, 
and by the process have become strong. Never before in the 
world's history has the conception of a whole people as the state 
been realized so tremendously, so comprehensively, so funda- 
mentally as now through our nation of seventy fully armed 
millions. 

Thus it is the peculiar character of this uprising in contrast 
with all those of earlier date, that from the outset it proceeded 
from a remarkable equilibrium of matured state policy and the 
ripened will of the people. Now we would also gladly recover 
that combination of individual personality and national character 
which so ennobled our first uprising. Truly, it is impossible to 
make the unreasonable and unhistorical claim that our personal 
humanity of today bears the same classical stamp as that of 
Goethe's and Humboldt's generation. The division of labor, the 
elaborate ramification of modern life has narrowed at the same 
time that it multiplied the ways open to us for the development 
! of personality. The abundant cultural .possessions accumulated 
! by the 19th century make it more difficult for the individual who 
I must master them to attain to true self-culture. It is only too 
clear that this condition of affairs is more favorable to a one-sided 
development of will power than to a many-sided development of 
the individual intellect. And yet the German retains, unquench- 
able and keen, the longing for a new intellectual content of exis- 
tence. If the men of '48, intellectually sated, required action, 
our generation amid the tumult of the modern universe of labor 
yearns for the holy calm of contemplation — and yet, after a brief 
pause, pushes forward again, unwilling long to renounce the sym- 
phonic energies of the age. How then shall we combine the two 
impulses, and be at once the surging wave and the heaven-reflect- 
ing mirror? Such is the problem of our day, a problem grasped 



26 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

more clearly by the German than by the inhabitants of other civil- 
ized nations because he has enjoyed both peace and tumult in 
more intense and rapid succession, because his nature, given to 
moods, is more receptive of the impression. Often the tumult 
itself, seeking peace once more, attempts to conquer it in the midst 
of turbulence. We can now more readily understand the literary 
and artistic revolution of 1890. This mighty subjective and 
naturalistic movement which tended to disregard all traditional 
standards, was yet the expression of deep-felt needs which have 
since striven for formulation in repeated endeavors. Through 
them our art and poetry has become, if not more harmonious, 
more serious, passionate and personal. Our eyes were again 
opened to the art of the home and the garden, all that was poetical 
in our grandfathers' world; we approached the romantic idealism 
of 1800, not in a search for dogmatic standards, but under the 
pressure of a new feeling for life. Nor were we attracted by the 
devitalized forms which had stirred to impatience even the pre- 
revolutionary German and the German of 1870, but by the fresh 
sources and the depths whence systems and thoughts had strug- 
gled upward from a dark, fruitful fermentation like that of our 
own experience. We are saved from decadent self-surrender by 
the categorical imperative of modern life, which compels us to 
take account of the mass of problems and practical knowledge 
offered by the 19th century and each new future day. 

As yet we had not been able to boast of complete accom- 
plishment but only of our longing for a new humanity which should 
unite power and depth of contemplation. In the midst of our 
search, as men unfitted yet, this war has come upon us and in a 
moment its tempest has carried us to the position in which the 
new humanity can be produced. Each recluse and eccentric 
who up to now had pursued the path of exaggerated subjectivity 
volunteered straightway to share with his whole soul in the great 
national experience. One and another, perchance, could not at 
once deny the spirit of light dilettantism to which he was accus- 
tomed, yet sincerity and earnestness predominated. Such men 
perceived that they might now succeed in bridging the chasm be- 
tween themselves and the world which had always been a source 
of secret bitterness, that they might regain the inner unity of 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 27 

existence which is so difficult of attainment in the midst of modern 
civilization, by staking their personal culture upon their national 
character and re-discovering the one through the other,! It is 
the ancient task assigned us by Fichte, yet now to be solved with 
wholly new means. All the boundless division of labor and differ- 
entiation of talents and interests which hitherto had threatened 
to divide our civic existence and narrow our personal existence 
have suddenly become a blessing to us. For each personal capa- 
city there is now room for employment in the infinitely ramified 
organization of modern warfare as waged by an entire people, 
both in the field and at home, for the preservation of economic 
wealth and national civilization. And each individual feels that 
his own limited accomplishment has a universal meaning and 
connection, that now it is to be performed, not, as in the days of 
peace, with grudgingly allotted time and strength, but with the 
surrender of the entire person. This is the great moralization of 
our modern division of labor, bestowed on us by the war in unex- 
ampled fulness. In the twinkling of an eye the modern engineer 
has been endowed with the high spirit of which the sensitive 
artist dreamt at intervals and in the existence of which we never- 
theless could not have perfect faith. When, in the quiet nights 
of the first weeks of August, we heard from a distance the great 
trains rolling past well-nigh without interruption, we felt our 
own heart's blood in the rhythmic throb of this iron mechanism. 
Shall not, indeed, a light of inner beauty descend upon modern 
labor through the achievements of this war, to illumine the fac- 
tories and counting houses of industrial Germany? Yet the 
shrewd foreigner will still continue to speak of German method 
and official accuracy. 

We, however, raise our glances yet higher to further stages 
in our new personal and national development, to what are in 
fact the highest aims of our struggle. It is clear to us now that 
our entire existence, that everything of spiritual and material 
wealth which we possess is threatened by destruction if superior 
force should conquer in this war. It was this knowledge which 
gave our present uprising in its first moments a character of such 
tragic seriousness as was possessed among the earlier crises only 
by that of 1813, and by this more in its dark beginnings of 1811 



28 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

than in the hopeful Spring of 1813. Nevertheless, foreign observ- 
ers repeatedly beheld a gleam of lofty hope in the eyes of our sol- 
diers. It is our wish to become a world power through this war, 
to be freed from intolerable restrictions and dangers within our 
own borders, to send our ships of commerce and war freely over 
every sea, and in due time to found large and rich colonies of our 
nationality in transoceanic regions. Do we then mean a world- 
power such as our chief enemy, England? Yes; and yet one quite 
different. If we wished only to enrich the world with a second, 
identical specimen of this sort of world power, we should really 
possess no inner justification for the deep and ingrained hatred 
which we now feel for the English character. Let us say openly ^ 
what it is in England which we hate and justly hate. This coun- 
try possesses more nationality than broad humanity. Not Ger- 
many but England is the land where free human individuality 
stands in the greatest danger of being regulated and devitalized 
by the lifeless formulae of the nation, by the .power of social 
convention, and most of all by the force of a system of political 
ethics which is both brutal and hypocritical. Only in appearance 
does the individual Englishman live more freely, only apparently 
is the pressure of the social and political order heavier upon the 
individual in Germany. The finest and deepest qualities of 
human nature flourish more abundantly with us, while on the 
hard soil of English nationality that breadth, mildness and native 
greatness of true humanity which we revere takes root with diffi- 
culty. It is not wholly lacking, but is checked by a national char- 
acter compounded of brutal egotism and pharisaical superiority. 
We have no wish to become a ruling nation of this sort — we do 
desire to be a free and powerful nation of powerful, free men. 
In this spirit we again assume the ancient task of our grandfathers 
and fathers of 1813, 1848 and 1870, like them attempting to com- 
bine the inalienable rights of the individual and the more delicate 
requirements of culture with the indispensable conditions of exis- 
tence — greatness, power and glory of the state. As little as they 
shall we be able to perform this task completely and forever, yet 
we will accomplish it for ourselves and our own time. The world's 
history today demands a newer, higher type of world-nation. 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 29 

Thus then would we become a world-nation in power and in 
spirit, capable of self organization, while vitally endowed with 
individuals.; 

Today we are still the most receptive, open hearted people, 
a people who cannot live without making its own "the intellectual 
wealth of other nations. Already we can assert that we know the 
world without us better than we are known by it. It was not 
we who turned aside, but others who broke away from us. This 
too belongs to the characteristic features of our present uprising, 
that we experience it in greater isolation than any that had gone 
before. In 1813 we fought as a member of a European league; in 
1848 our efforts found frequent analogy and sympathy abroad; 
in 1870 we were accorded, though without warmth, the right to 
found our national union. But today our neighbors have tried 
to envelope and isolate us spiritually as well as politically. Even 
from neutral countries the breeze is cool which is wafted to us, 
and we must be grateful for an occasional breath of genuine 
sympathy. Our present position is of course an object of study 
and Observation, but these are confined preferably to the petty, 
subaltern features of our existence, and willingly explain our 
confidence as auto-suggestion or intoxication. Now and then 
to be sure foreign countries state that they would gladly suffer 
and even esteem us as a nation of harmless culture, if we would 
but do them the favor of allowing ourselves to be defeated and 
doing away with our militarism. But since it is clearly perceived 
that we will never relinquish this guaranty of our power and 
independence, our enemies try their hand at wholesale slander 
and give vent to the flood of vituperation so familiar to us. It 
almost seems as though it must become a struggle of Western 
European civilization against that of Germany. Shall we reply 
with similar weapons? Shall we, one cannot but query, take part 
in this wanton destruction of old and vital cultural bonds between 
the Romanic and Germanic worlds? Because so little gratitude 
is shown for the hospitality and recognition which we accorded 
Bergson, Verhaeren, Maeterlinck and Hodler, voices are now 
raised among us to demand that we retire proudly within our own 
borders and develop our civilization in an exclusively national 
spirit. We quite approve of the aim to maintain a more cautious 



30 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

and critical attitude toward ephemeral celebrities of foreign 
vogue. But should we henceforward in narrow-minded arrogance 
isolate ourselves from the culture of foreign countries as the latter 
are doing from our culture, we would destroy its peculiar advan- 
tage and be false to the spirit of its creators and leaders. We 
shall not surpass the civilization of our opponents by imitating 
their defects and shutting ourselves up like them, but rather by 
remaining open to the same world of interests as formerly. When 
this war has come to a close it will be difficult enough as it is to 
overcome hatred and pick up once more the torn threads of scien- 
tific and artistic intercourse. If we prove ourselves in this more 
high-minded that our opponents, we shall display not merely in- 
tellectual superiority but political shrewdness as well. Once we 
have gained for ourselves the necessary power, as soon as we have 
achieved security in the spheres of politics and war, when we have 
proved to the world that our desire was not to conquer it but 
solely to make sure our position, we shall win new respect for our 
civilization also, and then its universal receptivity may become 
the subtlest and most spiritual means of conquest. We wish to 
become a world-nation. Let us remember that the faith in our 
mission proceeded originally from our purely intellectual impulse 
to absorb the world's spiritual wealth. If the world, as the poet 
prophesies, is someday to be saved through the German spirit, 
this can only come to pass through a spirit comprehending the 
entire world. 

We do not fear lest our uprising degenerate into a movement 
of narrow-minded nationalism. For this, the forces of which it 
is composed are too rich and too manifold. Truly, these forces 
which have hitherto flowed in a broad, unrestrained current are 
now closely confined in a narrow chasm, and it is not strange that 
a deal of muddy foam is cast up nor that the unparalleled situation 
now and again proves too much for men's nerves. We have not 
lacked symptoms of that inner weakness which seeks to resemble 
strength by means of vociferation, nor crude expressions of 
thoughtlessness though not of malice in comic papers and picture 
cards, against which those who are in authority have already 
justly warned us. Such coarseness and triviality have always 
been the disagreeable attendants of German culture and in times 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 31 

past drove even Goethe to despair. Beside this well-known 
national weakness we must also remember the more recent danger 
of contamination with the English spirit, a hardening of the heart, 
traces of which had already appeared here and there among us 
before the war. Had we been granted an easy triumph over our 
opponents we might have reason to fear a similar, perhaps even 
a worse stage in our inner development than that which followed 
1870. But danger and necessity have ever been the best guides 
in life and our soldiers, returning homeward from this terrible 
strife of nations changed in heart, with sober faces and ripened 
characters, may perchance become our instructors. The final 
word with regard to the nature and value of our uprising will be 
uttered only when its fruits are ripened, when a new Germany, 
not only mightier but nobler, shall illumine the world and the 
future. 



II 
NATIONAL POLICY AND CIVILIZATION 

(Freiburg, Aug. 4, 1914.) 

THE war has suddenly laid hands on everything which we 
possess, on everything which we are. In a moment the 
state demands of us complete self -surrender: our property, 
our physical selves, our entire being, strength, knowledge and 
capacity. From now on each individual must regard himself 
solely as a portion of the great national armament, and if a weapon 
is not literally thrust into his hands he has only the choice of the 
position in which he can most speedily or effectively aid in 
strengthening the moral and physical sinews of the nation. The 
government's control of the individual has attained its highest 
point — and we, with clenched teeth, must face the probability 
that we shall have to perform the most stupendous service which 
in the age of modern civilization has ever been demanded of the 
individual by the state. We thrill at the presentiment that unless 
we are quickly and decisively victorious we must experience 
suffering, sacrifice and endeavor beyond those of our grandfathers 
of 1870 and 1813. 

We feel assured of this not merely because we have to under- 
take a hitherto unheard-of task in the war upon two frontiers 
which has been forced upon us and because, if England joins our 
opponents, we shall face what is perhaps the most tremendous 
coalition that has ever existed. We too have vast, unparalleled 
means of defence wherewith to oppose them. For the first time 
we shall behold in their entire magnitude all those instruments 
of attack and defence which a century of political and cultural 
progress has developed in Europe. The various armaments are 
well known, no less than the weapons of intellectual, technical 
and economic civilization calculated to force the enemy directly 
or indirectly to surrender, but their combined employment in 

32 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 33 

the ancient seat of European culture will now be tested for the 
first time, and none can estimate the measure of destruction which 
they will produce. It is above all else this absolutely incalculable 
effect which may well cause even the stoutest heart among us to 
quail. Have civil governments and culture been developed, built 
up, refined and concentrated for a century merely that they may 
now be overthrown by their own creation? The question is 
imminent as to whether after all we are not witnessing a fearful 
abuse of civilization by the state. 

The pacificists and indeed all unpolitical idealists are accus- 
tomed to answer this question with a quick affirmative. Not 
so must the historian proceed: his work must be based on what 
is, not upon what should be. He does not despair of an eventual 
and final Yes or No, but assigns first place to a dispassionate, 
empirical examination of the efficient forces of historical exis- 
tence, of its great inevitable currents. His criticism is primarily 
dynamic, like that of the observers of wind and weather. Should 
he pursue it to its last consequences he would achieve a fatalistic 
recognition of all existing influences, a relativism which through 
its technical alertness is capable of gauging every historical 
tendency, but which must impartially acknowledge the victory 
of the strong, the defeat of the weak. The answer which he would 
thus have to render in the present instance is apparent. The 
state — or, as modern life compels us to call it, the aggregate of the 
state's requirements and the political instincts of the nation — is 
mightier than civilization. Through this aggregate civilization 
is governed and moulded, if need be, so completely in the service 
of the state as to lose every claim of its own, as necessarily to 
stand and fall with the state. If the state itself is conquered in 
the struggle with a more powerful adversary we must affirm 
with Jakob Burckhardt, if we still aspire to an estimate of values, 
that power as such is, was and will ever be a natural evil. 

Let us for the time being abide by this confessedly dynamic 
manner of criticism, let us postpone judgment and attempt to 
apply it strictly to existing conditions. The latter would then 
appear solely as the result of unavoidable necessity. The ele- 
mental national instincts of the Serbs, unchecked by culture or 



34 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

morality, through conspiracy and assassination threaten the integ- 
rity, the inner union of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. This 
nation, imperilled both in its existence and authority, rallies to a 
supreme effort of self-defence. The monarchy indeed, in view 
of the general European situation, declares its intention of re- 
nouncing all desire of conquest, its willingness to respect the 
territorial integrity of Servia, but in order effectively to secure 
itself in the future against the Pan-Servian propaganda, makes 
demands upon Servia which in that country and in Russia are 
regarded as an infringement of her sovereignty, as an actual 
extension of Austria's influence over Servia. At once all the 
stored-up instincts of Russian imperialism are aroused. Feeling 
that she must defend her natural, inherited and hard-won claim 
of a hegemony over the Southern Slavs and all her related interests 
in the neighboring Orient, Russia unsheaths the sword. There- 
upon the existing alliances, each of which is an expression of deeply 
rooted, widely ramified imperialistic interests, are set in motion 
and Europe echoes to the sound of weapons. England alone 
hesitates, considering upon which side the most dangerous enemy 
is to be found. Strong indeed is the temptation to employ this 
fortunate opportunity to crush Germany, her greatest economic 
rival, yet Germany's ruin means Slavic victory, means opening 
the way for the Russians to Constantinople and thus imperilling 
England's future interests in Asia Minor, Persia, and Central 
Asia. England, however, desires to maintain the continental 
balance of power and at the same time is unwilling to permit a 
complete victory of Germany over France. Since, in the nature 
of things, Germany can contemplate only a military victory and 
not the political ruin of France, since furthermore any possible 
indemnification through French colonies would depend largely 
upon England's consent, that country might, upon a calm esti- 
mate of its own interests, be for the present an impartial spectator 
if its desire were for nothing further than maintenance of the 
balance of power. But at this point is felt the pressure of the 
English imperialists so fraught with danger to us, which foresees 
England's profit and greatness in Germany's downfall. What 
shall be the end if this tendency of the English imperialistic policy 
is to prevail? The German fleet is not to be so easily destroyed 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 35 

as was once that of Denmark before Copenhagen; on the contrary 
it will involve a great portion of the English naval power in the ruin 
which is intended for it, and the maritime importance of the neu- 
tral and unharmed world-powers and their navies will be increased 
at England's expense. However deep the wounds which may 
be inflicted upon German commerce and German exports, im- 
perialistic England can contemplate the issue at best with but a 
mixed rejoicing — for the decisive struggle with the increased power 
of the Slavs over the future of Asia will then be a matter of more 
or less speedy realization, and if Germany and Austria are de- 
feated, what power will be left to balance that of the Slavic states? 
Its aim in the West once attained, the entire force of Russian 
expansion may be concentrated upon the East, upon Persia, India 
and China. What can England, lacking as she does a national 
defense, an army of the people, henceforth oppose to the mighty 
levies of Russia? Incidentally, English culture, the sum of Eng- 
land's aspirations in art and science, in all forms of intellectual 
refinement must face a situation in which new conditions will 
govern the exchange of spiritual values with those of the conti- 
nent. The nation of Goethe, Kant and Beethoven, whose delight 
it is to speak of Goethe and Shakespeare in the same breath, will 
be reduced to silence amid the concert of civilized nations, and the 
Slavic peoples may then prove to the world whether their wild 
and primitive national spirit, their semi-barbarian system of 
ethics can produce a worthy rival of German intellectual culture. 
Meanwhile the above observations have diverted our atten- 
tion from the purely dynamic criticism of tendencies at present 
influencing states and nations, which we intended to pursue. Is 
it possible, however, to adhere strictly to such a method? Even 
within the purely political sphere its results alone would not be 
final. We have mentioned the considerations which today must 
influence the English as proof that national policy cannot always 
be the mere blind issue of those tendencies most prominent at a 
given moment in state and nation, but must rather weigh and 
select, must ever choose cautiously and with prudence between 
the greater and the lesser evil. To be sure, there are also examples 
of a blind, instinctive policy — such namely as that which Russia 
now pursues and has pursued only too often in the past. As 



36 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

regards such a policy, it is unqualifiedly true that "power in 
itself is evil." It is a policy free from all cultural restraint. But 
there is also a type of national policy which is permeated and 
ennobled by the influence of civilization. This we will now con- 
sider. 

The imperialistic strivings of great nations have a twofold 
aspect, one which is to a certain extent unbounded by time, the 
other confined within temporal limits. Temporally unconfined, 
recurrent at all periods and inherent in the nature of a powerful 
state is the character of what Bismarck termed his one sure foun- 
dation — national egotism, the desire for unlimited control of the 
national destiny, for self-assertion by every available means. 
As a tendency such imperialism is always immanent, it was instinct 
in the great empires of antiquity no less than in those of the Mid- 
dle Ages and more recent date — its manifestations however are 
varied, its means and aims subject to the current of evolution, 
the aggregate of all the constantly changing factors in economic, 
social, political and intellectual existence, to the stream of civil- 
ization. He who should write the history of imperialism in this 
sense, describing in their development the changing forms of an 
unchanging tendency intimately related to all the abundant and 
varied energies of a growing or a decadent culture, would perform 
one of the most fruitful tasks which await the modern historian. 
Herein is contained a multitude of pregnant topics. Moreover, 
the separate forces of cultural life possess individually, in constant 
immanence, the impulse toward self-maintenance and self-asser- 
tion. The purest, most spiritual products of civilization such as 
religion, art and science strive for sovereignty and independence 
■ — and yet must be alternately submerged in the all-embracing 
flow of history. Thus there is a constant movement of attrac- 
tion and repulsion, of isolation and expansion, union and enmity 
between all vital forces — and especially between a nation's policy 
and its civilization. 

But in the midst of the confused interchange of influences 
a slow yet progressive development takes place. The cruder 
methods and aims of imperialism give place to others nobler and 
more humane. It is not indeed a part of this increased humanity 
to pursue imperialistic strivings with reduced sacrifice and energy, 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 37 

but rather that higher and finer cultural values are recognized, 
represented, defended and disseminated. At the same moment 
in these eventful days in which our civilization is being pressed 
exclusively into the service of the state, within the realm of the 
invisible our state, our imperialism, our war today are serving 
the highest purposes of national culture. The latter is the sap 
of the tree which brings forth flowers and foliage. It would 
become parched if the tree's roots were severed by the ax. All 
of us who have dreamt of a denationalized culture are awakened 
in the presence of the danger by which it is threatened. The 
period of hostility between civilization and state policy, so many 
traces of which were evident among us during the past few de- 
cades, is over. The minute-hand of time once more points to an 
era of intimate union. That this shall be a relation of free alli- 
ance and not of servitude upon which German civilization is to 
enter in conjunction with German policy, depends today upon the 
former alone. Let national culture grasp the hand of the state 
and in its hand become a weapon in a spirit of lofty inspiration, 
with that independent ethical impulse which Kant revealed to us. 
Then it shall appear that even at the time when such devotion 
to the state was an unconscious act, culture unknown to itself 
cherished and ennobled its protector. For, all that in a nation 
strives toward the light of the spirit, helps to give the nation life 
and vigor. Our hearts expand with joy as we perceive that each 
solitary, quiet stirring of the intellect, each act of self-surrender 
to something loftier and more sacred, stands in mysterious con- 
nection with the nation's life, with the mightiest demonstrations 
of its power. This is the highest ideal of modern existence, that 
we desire at one and the same time action and contemplation. 
As inheritors of the state and its culture our watch-word must 
be to face the hard realities of life fearlessly, and simultaneously 
to pierce with the inner eye the illumined depths of the spirit. 
It is for the world that we strive to achieve and maintain this ideal. 
As these concluding lines were written, England declared 
war upon us. We were facing the possibility — we must now 
summon all our energies to a supreme effort in defiance of this 
act of an insensate and suicidal imperialism. The kernel of our 
national being is sound. Sursum corda! 



Ill 
THE OBJECTS OF OUR STRIVING 

WIDESPREAD among the German people there exists a 
strong conviction that this war has been forced upon us 
through the guilt of others, that we are compelled to 
wage a defensive struggle for house and home in the deepest, 
most sacred meaning of the word. No false, intoxicating frenzy 
of the multitude, but a clear, sharp, sobering knowledge as to the 
causes of this war is spread among the most widely separated 
circles. The war itself will be conducted with the clearest political 
appreciation of each and every citizen, and — we may now hope — 
with the exertion of the utmost moral energy. Our desire is not 
to boast of what we have already accomplished in the way of 
enthusiasm, self-sacrifice and discipline, for we know that the 
severest tests as yet await us and further, that it once threatened 
to be a national weakness of modern Germany to acclaim vocifer- 
ously each new triumph of our labor and to revel in the sight of 
a harvest that had scarcely begun to grow. And yet today we 
have such bitter need of a cheerful and steadfast faith in ourselves 
and in our power to win against a world of enemies. This faith 
we do not draw from external success, for that might deceive us; 
we draw it rather from the depths of the national soul, from our 
moral and religious convictions, from the inner certainty that God 
is with us, redoubling the courage and strength of the righteous 
man of war. 

Inner faith, clear knowledge and a firm will must be intimately 
combined during every moment of this war. The God who 
is with us demands that we uphold His cause. It is Germany's 
privilege to strive for great and holy objects, it is her duty to see 
them transfigured before the eyes of every soldier. And when his 
eyes close, in the last moment of life a divine radiance shall pene- 
trate his soul and sweeten death. 

38 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 39 

The objects for which we contend are various and, just as 
throughout life, body and soul are closely united, even so the fair- 
est, most spiritual ideals which inspire us today can be understood 
only if we have learned to know the important earthly interests 
which we are defending. First and above all, we have drawn the 
sword to protect the existence and power of Austria-Hungary 
against the attack of Servia and Russia. Let us pierce straight 
to the heart of the matter and not be deluded by the assertion 
that here is nothing more than a astruggle between Slav and Teu- 
ton. It is true, the wild passions of the Pan-Slavs kindled the 
flame, and assuredly we in turn are defending against them our 
Germanic civilization. Yet this is no simple war of races, and 
what is more, it cannot and must not develop into one. Have not 
the Slavic peoples of Austria-Hungary rallied with unanimous 
enthusiasm to the banner of their empire? Have not our Poles 
as well straightway perceived that our cause is now theirs? They 
recognize the fearful danger by which all the smaller and — we 
may add — the more highly cultured Slavic nations are threatened 
at the hands of a brutal and tyrannously powerful Russia. And 
the Austrian Slavs feel that their government represents higher 
cultural values than that of Russia, that within its borders they 
can enjoy a greater measure of freedom, independence, air and 
light than under Russian hegemony. The days of fruitless 
racial conflict lie behind them. Germans, Slavs and Magyars 
are for the first time unitedly defending the venerable and lasting 
structure under the protection of which they have dwelt, and in 
the future will enlarge it to an abode in which justice shall be 
dealt out to every race and great common interests and ideals 
may blossom into fruitfulness. The people of Germany, moreover, 
rejoice at every inner and outer reinforcement of the allied com- 
monwealth, the state which has been our bulwark in times past 
again the conquerors of the Orient, which cherishes cultural ideals 
similar to our own and is bound to us by the lasting bonds of 
history. By defending Austria we defend at once the priceless 
existence of a friend and a portion of our own being. Should the 
Russians succeed in destroying Austria, hostility and hatred would 
threaten us from the lands which now take part with us in the 



40 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

familiar interchange of spiritual possessions. Then indeed the 
appalling racial warfare of Slav against Teuton would commence. 

Furthermore, the envy and hatred of our foes in the West 
have but waited for this hour that they might fall upon us. Since 
the attainment of our national unity we have been a peaceful and 
industrious nation. We coveted the territory of no one of our 
European neighbors, but France craved incessantly for the lands 
which it had once stolen from us, and England, becoming jealous 
of the fruits of our honest toil, ascribed to us to cover her inten- 
tions a lust for conquest which we never felt. The most unscru- 
pulous nation of conquerors known to modern history begrudged 
us the small share of yet undivided transoceanic territory which 
we required in order to feed our growing population. How could 
our industry, how could our laboring classes have developed with- 
out an assured supply of raw-materials from across the sea? 
Repeatedly we have endeavored in our relations now with Eng- 
land, now with Russia and France to secure by peaceful agreement 
spheres of interest and regions which would provide us with their 
raw materials, receiving our manufactures in return. Now, when 
at last these paths are closed to us by the fault of others it de- 
volves upon us to re-open them by the might of the sword, to 
fight for sustenance and the necessities of life in behalf of our chil- 
dren and grandchildren. 

Sustenance and life's necessities we must have for all our fellow 
countrymen in order to afford those who seek it access to the 
higher values of life. A nation's independence, power and wealth 
are of value only as they serve a noble, humanitarian culture. 
The nation of Goethe and Schiller may justly claim not to have 
neglected this service upon its attainment to wealth and power. 
Truly, in this solemn hour we will not deny that we might have 
shown greater zeal and self-sacrifice in its performance. Material 
interests have often unduly confined our efforts and at the same 
time torn assunder our party-existence, so that we had even cause 
to fear for the nation's power of resistance in the event of war. 
Let us candidly admit that all of us, whether our party was that 



. THE WARFARE OF A NATION 41 

of Right or Left, were troubled by this bitter strife between city 
and country, labor and capital, the poor and the rich. Our 
consciences could not but reproach us when we treated those of our 
fellow-countryman who were members of an opposing party with 
hatred and contempt. But today the tempest of war has dis- 
pelled the noxious vapors, and a heart-felt desire for internal peace 
inspires every party. In a like manner as the races of Austria 
have been brought to consciousness of their common political 
and cultural possessions, the castes and classes of the German 
nation have suddenly awakened to the happy realization that 
they are children of one mother, whose duty it is to strive for the 
priceless welfare of all. Such an experience is not to be forgotten. 
Whether we conquer or are defeated we may hope in the future 
to lead a healthier, nobler and freer national life. May this inner 
victory be the true conquest of our dreams. To be sure, we shall 
not cease to wage a strife of parties and interests as in the past, 
but now that we have stood shoulder to shoulder through suffering 
and death this strife will be conducted in another spirit, we shall 
be impelled to practise unselfishness not only toward the common 
Fatherland but toward one another. And above all, when parti- 
san feelings subside, new forces will become liberated to contrib- 
ute to better ends, to the highest aims of the nation. We will 
bear constantly in mind the truth that a people must not consume 
its energies in the enjoyment of power. It is commissioned by 
God to bestow a characteristic and unique impression upon the 
divinity in man. It must regard itself as a great artist, destined 
through the labor of his individual genius to create something 
more than personal, something eternal. By its service of the 
spirit of humanity a nation justifies its selfish striving, including 
war and the struggle for power. Religion, art, science, a noble 
and humane civilization, recognition of the independent dignity 
of man with all its logical consequences in the sphere of social life, 
all this in union with the nationalized state and throughout all, 
vivifying and scintillating, the creative genius of our people, — 
these are the loftiest possessions for which we strive. We desire 



42 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

to preserve the priceless energies of our nation, not permanently 
to subdue those of other nations, our opponents. For the present, 
indeed, we must overcome and reduce them, summoning all our 
strength with no weakness of compassion since we are fighting for 
our own existence. There is but one possible manner of treating 
brute beasts when they attack us, yet we must not permit our- 
selves to feel the brutal hatred which impels them. Sooner or 
later such hatred takes its revenge on those by whom it is cher- 
ished. Let us strongly oppose all symptoms of national hysteria 
which may appear among us. We are confident that victory 
will reward the people among whom supreme power of will is wed- 
ded to a broadly humanitarian civilization. 

If we are victorious, we shall conquer not for ourselves but 
for humanity. We look up to the everlasting stars which illumine 
mankind, confiding our destiny to their guidance. "Every 
nation," Schiller's words remind us, "has its appointed day in 
history, but the day of the German is the harvest-season of all 
time." 



IV 
GERMANY IN PEACE AND IN WAR 

IN the life of the individual as well as in that of nations 
there are certain fundamental instincts and forces which are 
apparently irreconcilably opposed to one another and yet 
which have their source in the underlying depths of nature. The 
man of ordinary intellect in self-defense either neutralizes such 
contention by sheer indifference or else assumes an attitude of 
uncompromising radicalism and rejects the claim of every dis- 
turbing voice. The truly humanitarian and historical attitude 
teaches, however, that such antinomies are essential to the moral 
life of individuals no less than of peoples. Herein is rooted every 
form of tragedy, yet hence may proceed as well the highest vitality 
through successful following of the narrow path which unites 
opposing forces. A highly civilized people must desire peace and 
at the same time may not utterly reject war. Pacificism seeks one 
of these aims exclusively, chauvinism the other. There have 
been both pacifists and chauvinists among us but neither have 
given full expression to the national will. 

For it has been granted to us Germans to drink more deeply 
of the joy of peace as well as of the exaltation of righteous warfare 
than perchance has been the lot of any other nation. In time 
of piece, by the labor of hand and brain we accomplished task 
after task, our joy in creation knew no bounds. Not only did 
we add to our material possessions but we felt the duty of 
progress within that realm of nobler intellectual cultivation 
which Goethe and Schiller had thrown open to our people. 
Above all, our young men felt stirrings of a joyous vitality. 
Thus they cemented friendships, began anew to wander sing- 
ing through the world, cast themselves upon Nature's bosom 
not in fruitless longing but to imbibe strength for the toil 

43 



44 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

and struggle of life. And to the older ones among us the 
thought was pleasing that this ardent generation might per- 
haps succeed in uniting the enterprising, purposeful energy of 
modern humanity with the contemplative depth and poetic mood 
of our grandfathers. But for the entertainment of this hope two 
assumptions were indispensable. On the one hand we were com- 
mitted to the wish that an honorable and glorious peace might 
be accorded our German nation through years to come, in order 
that our budding powers should attain an undisturbed maturity. 
We were bound to be suspicious of all adventurous longings for 
warlike conquest, since these would have degraded and material- 
ized our intellectual strivings and our spiritual progress. But 
on the other hand, inasmuch as we were surrounded by jealous 
enemies, it was necessary that we should keep our weapons bright. 
We were compelled to cherish military skill and virtue in our midst, 
and yet to keep a tight rein upon all warlike passions. It is with 
a clear conscience that we can now declare, to the last moment we 
have been mindful of this duty. Throughout the past decade 
in which the temptation was so frequent to destroy with a German 
thrust the net-work woven about us by our enemies, not once did 
the Kaiser or the imperial government deviate from their calm 
and resolute policy of peace, and neither by them nor among the 
masses of the people was ear given to the criticism and reproaches 
of overpatriotic individuals. Last year, when we again made 
generous sacrifices for the protection of the empire by an increase 
in the army and additional taxation, it was the heartfelt wish of 
an overwhelming majority of the nation that this sacrifice might 
serve the cause of peace and that our enemies, recognizing our 
proud determination to risk all for national honor, might at 
length cease to torment us. 

Fate would not have it so. We had overestimated the sober 
prudence of our foes and underrated the strength of their passions. 
The mad, unbridled current of Pan-Slavism, aiming at Austria's 
ruin through the vile instruments of murder, hypocrisy and per- 
jury, began the war. Furthermore, the overwrought chauvinism 
of France and her lust for revenge had played too long with the 
fire now to be able or even to desire to avoid it — while the calm, 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 45 

calculating, mercenary spirit of England hoped that at length it 
might terminate our economic rivalry with overwhelming disaster. 

Against such dark, unworthy passions we have already begun 
to prevail through the nobler, higher passions of a just strife, a 
holy warfare. The most peaceful of all the nations who are now 
locked in conflict has developed the greatest military power — 
actually, to our own joyous astonishment. But this power is so 
tremendous because until the last moment we sought peace. In 
the past, who of us believed that all internal dissensions would be 
terminated by so sudden and mighty an effort, and that only the 
one overpowering thought would now inspire all : We will triumph, 
because we must triumph, since otherwise we should be shamefully 
crushed. For literally the entire wealth of our national civiliza- 
tion, spiritual and material, our prosperity as well as our intellec- 
tual life, our freedom no less than our unity hangs in the balance, 
because the bitter hatred of our foes is boundless and inhuman. 
And yet more! Beyond their immediate task of subduing the 
enemy by all the terrors of self-defence, our souls are illumined 
by the vision of a German future which shall guide our national 
life to a higher and nobler plane. It is our hope that this future 
may combine the blessing of former peaceful toil with the blessing 
of this war. Never shall we desire to be a brutal race of conquer- 
ors, but we do desire to cherish by every means at our command 
the inner firmness and unanimity which the war has bestowed 
upon us. Truly, there will be no lack even in the future of fric- 
tion and discontent between parties, called forth by the cares of 
daily existence. Yet our memory of the Sabbath which we now 
keep together will cause the bitterest invectives to remain un- 
spoken. Great common sufferings constitute the cement in the 
structure of nations. Once more we have gained confidence in 
ourselves; untouched and untried spiritual powers have risen 
before our eyes in every class and level of the national organism. 
We have learned that on its march through life the German people 
carries with it, so to speak, a war-ration of heroism and patriotism 
whose bearer may reach the limits of the world. 

Our great, heroic warfare will be followed by a splendid peace, 
equally rich in heroic labors. For the German nation will issue 
from this strife internally united, purified and strengthened. 



46 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

We who stop at home can aid in the struggle only by labor 
and deeds of sacrifice which are small in comparison with those 
of our soldiers; often we can contribute nothing but our longings, 
our emotions and our words. Yet words and emotions may 
develop force, provided they are borne by the current of an 
overpowering will. May our warriors in the field never for an 
instant lose the conviction that all who bear the name of Germans 
are with them in spirit, calling to them: "We are proud of you and 
your victories; we clasp your hands in fervent gratitude; endure 
through all manner of evil, for you are the harbingers of a new dawn 
for our nation." 



THE CENTURY OF UNIVERSAL MILITARY 

SERVICE 

ON the 3d of September 1814, King Frederick William III 
signed the statute submitted to him by the minister of 
war, von Boyen, regarding liability to military service. 
Through this statute the Prussian system of universal liability, 
which at the outset of the War of Liberation had been introduced 
only for the period of hostilities, received a permanent foundation 
and an historically effective form. The institutions created by 
this law still persist with but few changes in our present-day 
German military organization, and not in this alone. Six of the 
eight world powers of today have followed our example. Of the 
four now contending against Germany and Austria, three possess 
an organization the theory of which may be traced back to the 
statute of September, 1814. The same is true of Servia and Mon- 
tenegro; in recent years the military organization of Belgium has 
displayed a marked approach to this type, and England is at 
present seriously considering its adoption. Our allies, Austria- 
Hungary and Turkey have long since been in possession of it. 

In the midst of the storm of events few Germans have re- 
marked upon the centenary of the Prussian army-law, and even 
less could this be expected of our enemies. Nevertheless they 
have done homage to it through their actions. Mankind today 
observes the celebration on a tremendous scale. Millions are 
contending against other millions, impelled by the force of an 
idea which was given definite shape in the period of Prussian 
uprising. Should we rejoice or be cast down that the sword of 
our forging has at length been turned against ourselves? It is 
true, there is no end to the multitude of the armies which we and 
our allies now face or may have to face in the future, and if we 
compare numbers solely their preponderance would appear over- 
whelming. And yet, notwithstanding the sober, nay tragic mood 

47 



48 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

with which we took up arms, from the start a flash of inspiration 
convinced us that we were equal to the undertaking and that an 
untried, unparalleled strength lay hidden in the national military 
organization which would lead us to victory against superior 
numbers. Others have been able to imitate us in many ways, 
but not in all. There is an essential individuality in all great 
historic forces, the foundation both of their complete inner exis- 
tence and their most powerful external effects. Deep rooted in 
the heart of German military legislation and the period of our 
first uprising lies the power possessed by us, but not, as we believe, 
by our opponents. 

Let us, to be sure, not underrate the qualities common to both 
sides, derived not from a mere adoption of our organization, but 
from the capacity for development of every modern nation. Uni- 
versal military service is as much a part of the modern nation- 
alized state as it is true that blade and hilt must combine to form 
a sword. The blade was forged in the fire of necessity by the 
French national government of the Revolution, which however 
straightway blunted its own weapon by permitting the use of 
substitutes and money-payment in place of service. Scharnhorst, 
Gneisenau and Boyen first developed its keen edge and temper by 
their opinion that only through absolutely universal obligation to 
service in defense of the Fatherland could the highest degree of 
national military power be attained, and this was necessary to 
Prussia's existence as the weakest, most undeveloped of the five 
great European powers of that day. With a magnificent sense of 
the practical they forthwith organized the entire staff of officers 
by means of which the qualities of a trained army were combined 
with those of a national militia, and through which a comparative- 
ly small peace establishment could be expanded to the most tre- 
mendous war-footing. The standing army with a three-year 
term of service was intended as a nucleus, a school of military 
training which, when enlarged by the reserves of the previous two 
years, was to form the first strong defence in time of war. Behind 
this stood the first and second classes of reserves (Landwehr) 
consisting of drilled but older troops, and for last emergency, the 
general levy (Landsturm). By means of this graded organization 
it became possible for the modern national government to be at 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 49 

once military and cultural in its nature, to protect the economic 
and spiritual interests of peaceful labor, and at the same time, in 
aage of war, to command the sum total of the national forces of 
defence, both physical and moral. 

All of these measures could be imitated, and because of the 
evident advantage which they contributed to the modern state, 
were imitated. In this manner the current popular ideals of 
freedom served to increase the power of the state. This type of 
military organization was alike democratic, by reason of the uni- 
versal liability to service, aristocratic, because of the important 
position of the trained corps of officers, and monarchical, as a 
result of the severe discipline by which the whole was governed. 
But through the combination of these elements it was also made 
capable of adaptation to widely different forms of government. 
The French Republic adopted it no less than despotic Russia, 
and both at this moment are rendering a common tribute to the 
land of its origin. 

We need have no fear though they attack us right and left, 
for our foothold is on the native soil of this organization and within 
recent weeks it has afforded us a rare and sublime experience. 
The miracle of Antt.ii? was witnessed a second time, the original 
forces which produced the army-law were awakened to youthful 
energy and united once more after wide separation and confusion. 

The Prussian army-law of 1814 was an expression of German 
idealism and Kantian philosophy. This is well known to whoever 
is familiar with the memoirs and early history of its originators. 
By the aid of universal military service they wished to pass beyond 
the stage of blind, mechanical obedience among the army, they 
sought for nobler, more spiritual incentives and aimed at a ful- 
fillment of patriotic duty by the strength of moral freedom and 
inspired self-sacrifice. It is true that in so doing they over- 
estimated the power of these incentives in the daily life of the 
people, and also conflicted with the technical and military spirit 
of realism characteristic of the professional Prussian officer. 
But even the latter was inspired by a great historical ideal; the 
political faith of Frederick the Great, the proud will to conquer 
which from the beginning was combined with a stern sense of duty 



50 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

and rigorous subordination, such as "the first servant of his 
people" had practised before their very eyes. Thus the history 
of universal military service in Prussia and Germany was from 
the outset a struggle, a compromise between Frederick the Great 
and German idealism — and yet a most fruitful strife, in which 
neither principle was wholly victorious, though both exerted a 
persistent influence and in the end drew closer together, and thus 
became mutually broadened and intensified. Thus and thus 
only, through the unusual and peculiar tension of two vital forces 
of essentially German origin, was the system of universal military 
service enabled to perform its highest achievements in Prussia 
and Germany. Although after Roon's reorganization the realistic 
attitude of the trained army in appearance prevailed over the 
idealistic principle of a national militia as represented by Boyen, 
the year 1870 at once revealed afresh the true militia spirit. In 
every national conflict the immaculate army of trained soldiers 
was transformed as if by an electrical shock into a popular army 
in grey campaign uniforms, resolute and defiant. In the winter 
of 1913-14 we were divided over the Zabern incident, but in August 
of 1914 Frank, a representative of Social-Democracy in the Reich- 
stag, commended our brilliant and rigorous military organization, 
then, filled with the spirit of sacrifice, departed to meet death on 
the field of battle. 

What motive impelled him to do so? Primarily, no doubt, 
a clear political appreciation of the fact that his own party, if it 
were to demand its just rights, must also fulfill its duties; yet this 
sense of duty arose from a wealth of German idealism, the heritage 
of Schiller and Kant. 

For the most part foreigners are familiar only with the an- 
tithesis of German idealism and German militarism; these they 
regard as conflicting spirits in the breast of the nation, one of 
which has for two generations subdued and repressed the other. 
We are content if these observers now draw from their historical 
error false political conclusions, which are of service to us in the 
war. Again and again the English have foretold the imminent 
moral collapse of the German offensive, because of our heavy, 
losses in men upon the battlefields of Flanders and Northern 
France. Again and again new reserve regiments clad in grey 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 51 

campaign uniforms rise to oppose them, made up of Landwehr 
troops and youthful volunteers, led by older officers, by officials, 
professors, etc., as acting commanders, and singing, storm the 
enemies' positions. Our opponents can scarcely know that even 
in these troops there breathes a share of the inspiration of 1813 
and 1815, of armed and disciplined German civilization. The 
reserves, composed of the best of our laboring classes, and the 
volunteers, picked men of the educated younger generation, form 
the two elements which in 1813 Scharnhorst added to the previous 
military organization, so that soldiers, laborers and professional 
men were combined in the higher union of a national army. When 
we picture to ourselves the Springtime of 1813, we behold the alert 
countenance of the volunteer sharp-shooter and the man of the 
people clad in uniform blouse with the badge of the reservist. 
And yet another conception of Scharnhorst and Boyen, even in 
their day regarded as idealistic, has again reappeared in a more 
realistic form. They sought with unflinching audacity to assem- 
ble and oppose to the enemy the utmost resources of national 
strength in support of the national warfare of Prussia. For this 
purpose they assigned to the entire male population not with the 
colors but who were in any degree capable of bearing arms, the 
task of offering the last relentless national resistance to an invad- 
ing foe. The plan did not permit of incorporation even into the 
fundamental theory of modern organized warfare, but the organ- 
izing spirit of the 19th century preserved the effective principle, 
and the massed battalions of the Landsturm which today are 
guarding our lines of communication and railroads and which in 
East Prussia even contributed toward filling the trenches, are 
the tranquil and mature embodiment of a steadfast resolve to risk 
all in defense of our highest possessions. Who can doubt that if 
necessity demands it we shall have recourse even to those who 
have passed the age limit of 45 years? 

Thus does the need of the hour bid us return to the sources 
of universal military service, combining their strength with the 
experience of a realistic 19th century. In 1814 Boyen organized 
the Prussian army in such a manner that troops of the line and 
the first class of reserves had to enter the field together at the 
start. Roon's generation made objection on the score that the 



52 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

reserves, who for the most part were commanded by civil reserve 
officers, could not possibly render a like service with the first line 
troops. Accordingly, after 1860 the line forces were increased 
and the reserves assigned other duties, limited to those which 
our Landsturm now has to perform. The battles of 1866 and 1870- 
71 were for the most part fought by regiments of the line. But 
today reserve and Landwehr troops must everywhere take their 
places at the very front. No one thinks of resuming the eager 
controversy which took place in the period of dispute between the 
advocates of the line and those of the Landwehr. Both indeed 
were right in emphasizing the particular, indispensable value of 
one or the other form of organization, both wrong in claiming for 
their views an absolute and permanent validity. That which 
sufficed for 1814 no longer sufficed for the peculiar tasks of 1866 
and 1870, and even more are these exceeded by the efforts required 
in 1914. The military principle of today demands that a maxi- 
mum of professional training shall be combined with a maximum 
of national and popular strength. Much has been accomplished 
in this way, yet more remains to be accomplished. And though 
in the end we cannot omit physical limitations from our reckon- 
ing, there is not and will never be a limit or prospect of exhaustion 
of the two great spiritual sources whence flow our physical power: 
Frederick the Great and German idealism. 



VI 
TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD 

WAR is the great destroyer and renewer of civilization. 
It behooves each individual to contribute his effort to the 
end that the renewal may exceed the destruction. Not 
only has he to do this by means of tangible accomplishment and 
sacrifice — these duties are self-evident — but furthermore by inner 
self-development, by a rebirth of his personal character. For 
in the last analysis all tangible as well as intangible benefits of 
civilization are rooted in the depths of strong personalities. Our 
task is to share in the great lessons of this war not merely with a 
whole heart, but with a clear understanding, that we may reason 
in the moment of action and thence draw spiritual support. 

We will attempt to derive from daily observation an experi- 
ence of universal significance. In the first days of the war we 
one and all underwent a shock to our moral equilibrium. Beyond 
all doubt, the noblest and best qualities of human nature answered 
the call of the hour, yet not these only but also a mixture of less 
lofty sentiments. Above all else, our power of critical judgment, 
our sense of reality seemed unable to bear the tremendous burden 
of the situation. The inevitable crop of rumor and hearsay grew 
to untoward proportions in our excited minds and in an instant 
every cloud on the horizon assumed a portentious shape. For 
example, a report from Freiburg declares: "The ladies at the 
railroad-station throng about the French prisoners in a most 
unseemly manner, overwhelm them with attentions and buy their 
caps as souvenirs; so and so saw at the police court a table covered 
with such caps which had been taken from their purchasers." 
Upon closer investigation the entire episode was reduced to the 
purchase of a single cap by a young boy-scout, who had later been 
compelled to surrender his trophy. Even experienced business- 
men take part in the dissemination, enlargement and vulgarization 

53 



54 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

of such stories, which often have not the least foundation in 
reality. To oppose all such perversions of the truth and at every 
opportunity to urge sober judgment and precision on the part of 
our fellows is certainly a moral and patriotic duty, yet almost a 
labor of Sisyphus. Indeed we here face a struggle with human 
weakness rather than against deliberate untruth. Whenever the 
historian has recourse to the accounts of contemporaries and not 
to the progress and records of events themselves he must con- 
tinually reckon with this weakness and never weary of making 
a critical reservation in the case of every unauthenticated report. 
During the first days of August I was vividly reminded of the 
earlier controversies touching the actual events of the 18th of 
March, 1848, and resolved to accept the stories even of eye-wit- 
nesses with far greater caution than I had observed in the past. 

Today we are called upon to wage a far more serious contest 
in support of truth against error, nay, even against deliberate 
falsehood. To a degree almost inconceivable our enemies have 
forged a weapon of lies against us, and have aimed the machine- 
guns of their telegraph-bureaus and newspapers upon neutral 
countries, in an endeavor to deprive us of our reputation and 
honor, to lash the sentiment of the entire civilized world into a 
fury of hatred against Germany. Day by day we read their 
fabulous inventions, at one moment unable to control our laughter, 
and in the next our horror. Thus, the commander of a German 
vessel, taken prisoner by the English, is reported to have confessed 
the location of the mines which he had laid, out of fear of execu- 
tion. German women are said to wear necklaces formed of the 
eyeballs of wounded French captives. In London the Financial 
News spreads the absurd rumor that the German emperor, in 
anticipation of the final catastrophe, is investing his capital in the 
United States and Canada. On yet another day reports had it 
that the German war loan had suffered a collapse and that a pound 
of meat cost seventy-five cents in the Berlin markets. 

To be just to our enemies, there is one fact which we must 
reckon in their favor. A large portion of the rumors thus circu- 
lated concerning us may quite as credibly have originated in lack 
of judgment and nervous excitement as the numberless myths and 
legends which we ourselves beheld spring up in the first weeks of 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 55 

the war, each in close proximity to the scene of the event. The 
latter, to be sure, so far as I am able to judge from personal experi- 
ence, were of a decidedly harmless nature in contrast with the 
crude and virulent fabrications of our opponents. Moreover, 
it is strikingly apparent in a comparison of the two classes that 
the German rumors were directed far more against ourselves than 
against the enemy. The instance above mentioned is a case in 
point. Very similar accusations were made against the charitable 
endeavors of certain ladies in other cities of Germany, and on 
each occasion the cause for such exaggeration of a single occurrence 
was finally demonstrated. Especially noteworthy is the fact 
that the first verbal accounts received in Freiburg concerning the 
struggle on the Vosges line invariably reported only disaster and 
lack of success for our troops, mistakes and blunders on the part 
of our leaders, and the like. All of these fabulous accounts recur 
in certain typical forms and always with the same content, which 
can at once be detected by the critically trained investigator. 
One such typical motif for a number of local fictions was, to speak 
plainly, an inclination to pessimism, mistrust and fault-finding 
with our fellow-countrymen. The most common source of a 
wholesale production of rumors was naturally the dread of foreign 
spies. When the French crossed our borders reports of their ex- 
cesses passed from mouth to mouth, but in this case invention 
was comparatively a negligible factor and the greater part of the 
stories were eventually verified by authoritative testimony and 
official confirmation. 

Peccatur intra muros et extra: The fault is not confined to 
either side. The same widespread motifs produce similar inven- 
tions among both parties which resemble one another closely 
and can be distinguished only by their designation as friendly or 
hostile. Nevertheless the impression is forced upon us that this 
tendency has much milder, more harmless, and charitable results 
on the German side than in the enemies' camp. We have, thank 
Heaven, nothing to compare with the bitter and malicious stories 
which are there invented. And moreover, another most striking 
difference is to be observed. Our crop of rumors is confined for 
the most part to the sphere of popular oral discussion; on the whole, 
our newspapers have rejected them with praiseworthy scepticism, 



56 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

here and there indeed under the pressure of a beneficently strict 
military censorship. Naturally our press also publishes reports 
from foreign countries which are injurious to our opponents and 
are intended so to be. There is no doubt that even in our midst 
malicious rumors have sprung up — for example, the pseudo- 
revolution in Odessa. And yet such rumors have but the propor- 
tions of a modest range of foot-hills in comparison with the moun- 
tainous accumulation of foreign lies. A terribly systematic 
propaganda is at the bottom of this daily increment of deceit and 
myth on the part of the hostile press, which renders the horrified 
neutrals breathless with amazement. Nor is this result offset 
by the fact that the neutral countries reject nine out of every ten 
such falsehoods. Quantity prevails in the end and, in the esti- 
mation of our opponents, enough will always remain to produce the 
desired impression. Unfortunately, enough has indeed remained. 
We must seek more deeply for the source of this campaign 
of mendacity. War is the touchstone of national character. It 
brings the qualities of a people into strong relief by transforming 
them into instruments of warfare. We are almost tempted to 
hold it to the credit of the French that their spirited Gallic fancy 
is incapable of moderation in time of war. This nation cannot 
exist without a swarm of self-complacent illusions, which even 
during peace render it difficult for the Frenchman quietly to com- 
prehend the manners and customs of other peoples from their 
respective national standpoints. The Englishman experiences 
the same difficulty, but from another cause — from two apparently 
irreconcilable features of his national character. At one and the 
same time he is the narrowly restricted islander and the ruler of 
a world-empire. Thus he regards himself as a standard for all 
things human. Without regard for others he is true to his own 
nature while scorning to show just appreciation for the subject 
race, the stranger or his opponent. Of course we are here speaking 
only of broad, crude national types. Never, not even in the midst 
of the conflict, shall we forget that in France as well as in England 
there exists an independent and eminent intellectual culture 
capable of a universal understanding of the varied forms of human 
civilization. Nevertheless, in the prevailing inability or disinclin- 
ation of the English and the French to do thorough justice to the 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 57 

character of a foreign people there lies undoubtedly a significant 
cause for the hideous falsehoods of which they have been guilty. 
We are not known or but ill-known to our neighbors, and there- 
fore we are held capable of all manner of atrocities and made the 
victims of every sort of accusation. 

In connection with the above cause, however, another yet 
more significant must be given. A large part of the lies aimed at 
us we regard simply as common hypocrisy. We are portrayed 
as brutal invaders of international law, as incendiaries, Huns, 
Vandals and the like because of our march through Belgium 
and our attack upon Louvain and Rheims — without exception, 
acts of desperate self-defence and the direst necessity of war, 
which our opponents, were they in our position, would have per- 
formed in the same manner or with far less regard for the hostile 
population. The pitiless English campaign of destruction during 
the Boer war is still fresh in our memories, even today this nation 
constantly infringes the rights of neutrals although without 
imperative necessity. The French in Alsace make prisoners of 
war civil officials and teachers, and the brutalities of the Russians 
in East Prussia are without the least military justification, pure 
outgrowths of an untamed barbarism. Moreover, the sufferings 
which naturalized Germans in France and Belgium have endured 
at the hands of the people and the government are the fruit of 
what is in fact a far more malicious barbarism, hidden under the 
veil of a superficial civilization. We have but a single moral 
standard for the acts of friend and foe, and condemn all casual 
excesses of our soldiers with the same severity as those of the 
enemy. Thus we demand that an equal measure be meted by the 
other side — but this is denied us, it would seem, as a matter of 
principle. We shall endeavor to tear the mask from this species 
of hypocrisy and look into the sources whence it springs. 

Bernhard Shaw has published in the Daily News. some 
utterances of a most refreshing truthfulness. "Our national trick 
of assuming an attitude of righteous indignation is sufficiently 
repulsive in the strife of hostile parties. In war itself it is ungen- 
erous and indefensible. Let us take the field openly and leave 
behind us hypocrisy and hard feeling. This war is a war of 
imperialism, nothing more nor less." 



58 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

This is language in which the objective historian delights. 
He is accustomed to look upon governments as living personalities 
which demand for themselves free breathing space, and whose 
imperialistic warfare can therefore be justified by the pressure of 
vital necessity. Not every struggle for power, to be sure, can lay 
claim to this excuse. Bismarck observed a sharp distinction 
between a policy of national interest and one of national prestige, 
and even such a tolerant and broad-minded historian as Ranke 
managed to distinguish with accuracy the point at which a healthy, 
organic imperialism ended and a feverish over-exertion com- 
menced. Nevertheless, he undertook the consideration of every 
imperialistic war — almost as if on the principle of "in dubio pro 
reo" — with the sincere desire to explain it by organic causes, vital 
impulses and requirements of the state. In this he has been imita- 
ted by the modern German school of history — and to no small 
degree by that of other countries. Yet this point of view is 
essentially German and that to an extent which has involved 
German historians in the reproach, familiar on the part of foreign- 
ers, that Germany was the prey to a cult of power. Moreover, 
continue our accusers, the entire German nation of Bismarck's 
day and our own knows and feels only the thirst for power, and 
its historians accommodate themselves to the service of this 
policy. Today the world resounds with these charges against the 
spirit of modern Germany, and all the falsehoods which are dis- 
seminated concerning us are intended as proofs of the hypothesis 
that Germany must be subdued in the interest of the entire world. 
Thus our opponents seek to represent us as enemies of mankind 
and our emperor as a second Attila, "the scourge of God." In 
the Corriere della sera an Italian political writer, Ettore Janni, 
declares the German dream of world power to be the greatest 
national undertaking conceived since the days of Rome, speaks 
of the incubus of Prussian dictatorship and bestows on Germany 
the title of a splendid wild animal, "magnifica belva" — inconsis- 
tently enough, inasmuch as he had earlier complained of our dis- 
playing so little understanding and sympathy for the Italian 
enterprise against Tripoli. Tripoli! When the Italians des- 
patched their men-of-war thither, acting on the principle "We 
need this country," Friedrich Naumann justly observed that the 
spirit of Machiavelli had awakened in them. Yet Machiavelli 



THE WARFARE OF A NATION 59 

had also the courage of his convictions which made him call 
matters by their true name and this has been lost by our modern 
critics in Italy and in the camp of our enemies. Herein exists a 
marked difference between the methods of foreign nations and 
those of Germany. Today we are one and all, friend and foe, 
pursuing a vigorous and egotistic policy of imperialism, but the 
instinctive concealment of the uncompromising reality under 
sentimental illusions and dreams is stronger among our enemies 
than in our own midst. With the English it has become veritable 
cant, or, to use Shaw's words, a "national trick. " Since the days ^ 
of the French Revolution the French have accumulated a wealth 
of high-sounding phrases which envelope every act of their im- 
perialistic policy with a blinding aureole of culture and civiliza- 
tion. Thus they station lookouts upon the towers of Rheims ! 
cathedral to discover the positions of our artillery, and yet invoke 
all humanity with horrified words when we endeavor to dislodge 
by our marksmanship these threatening observers. Hypocrites 
and generation of vipers! 

But while we thus upbraid them we must be severely critical 
of our own deeds. The tendency to conceal a policy of imperial- 
ism beneath an idealistic veil is common to human nature, nor is 
the rank and file of public opinion even in Germany capable of 
distinguishing sharply between appearances and facts in our 
foreign policy. Nevertheless, from the more straightforward, 
unvarnished German character there issues more readily the spirit 
of an austere truthfulness, which pierces through every veil to 
the heart of things and scorns to parade itself in phrases. The 
foreigner, however, who is accustomed to speak from behind a 
mask of conventionality, and who has deceived himself while 
deceiving others, boldly explains our frankness as brutality. 
The contrast here suggested assumes many forms. The abrupt 
language of truth once spoken by Luther even today sounds harsh 
to the Romanic ear. As has been proved anew from the begin- 
ning of this war, the German is a champion of battle who offers 
his forehead to an enemy and loves the charge and the attack. 
The Frenchman prefers to shoot from behind a wall out of attic 
windows and carries his civilian's garb in his knapsack, in order 
that he may escape undiscovered. When therefore the German 
replies to his opponent's treacherous methods of fighting with a 



60 THE WARFARE OF A NATION 

blow from the shoulder, the outcry of foreign nations against 
German barbarism is again heard. The inhabitants of Western 
Europe surpass us Germans in the formal and aesthetic advan- 
tages of an older social culture and find us wanting in the attrac- 
tive disguises of primitive nature. But in the hour which decides 
the fate of nations, the language of truth commands a higher 
cultural value. 

Let us compare for example the manly, upright statement of 
the imperial chancellor with the swelling rhetoric of Poincare's 
address to the French people. Whereas the latter culminates in 
the false assertion that France since 1870, from a heart-felt love 
of peace had abandoned the desire for just restitution, we have not 
for a moment disguised the imperialistic self-interest which forced 
the sword into our hand. We began the struggle in order to sup- 
port the authority of Austria, since Austria is our one sure ally 
whose dissolution would gravely endanger our own position. 
Furthermore, we do not deny that, now the contest has begun, 
our other imperialistic needs which we have hitherto endeavored 
to satisfy by peaceful diplomacy, must also be weighed in the 
balance of war. From now on we wish to gain for ourselves a 
place to live in and peace for a century. But in so doing we re- 
pudiate smilingly and with quiet consciences the accusation that 
we are striving for the supreme mastery of the world. We shall 
have won enough when we have secured a firm and independent 
position in the congress of world powers. When the moment 
arrives to utter our demands, it will be seen that the German 
people has followed, not a policy of national prestige but one of 
healthy national interest. To many of our best men the thought 
has occurred that we must seek to offer France a like honorable 
peace to that which Austria was granted by Bismarck at Nikols- 
burg in 1866. Whether we shall succeed in so doing does not, to 
be sure, depend upon us alone. Yet it is no mere phrase of con- 
cealment but rather a strong historical conviction upon our part 
that the future development of modern states and their civiliza- 
tion will not permit the formation of a threateningly preponderant 
world-empire. This conviction is the indispensable supplement 
to the imperialism of Bismarck and modern Germany, and the 
truth of each will prevail against all the lies and treachery of our 
opponents. 



